In recent years, to improve the convenience, an increasing number of vehicles are provided with power sliding doors. The power sliding door is a mechanism for automatically opening and closing a sliding door, and includes many electrical and electronic parts such as a motor and an operation switch for achieving the mechanism, an entrapment detection sensor provided in consideration of the security for a passenger, and a control unit for controlling them. Many (or all) of the electrical and electronic parts associated with the power sliding door are mounted within the sliding door. In addition to the above-mentioned parts, many electrical and electronic parts such as a power window motor and a speaker are mounted in the sliding door.
The electrical and electronic parts mounted in the sliding door need to receive power supply from the vehicle body side and communicate various control signals with the vehicle body side. In this respect, a configuration has been conventionally known in which a terminal is provided in each of the sliding door side and the vehicle body side so that the terminals are brought into contact with each other when the sliding door is closed to thereby supply power from the vehicle body side to the sliding door side. In this configuration, however, power cannot be supplied to the above-mentioned electrical and electronic parts under a state where the sliding door is open. Therefore, this configuration cannot be adopted in a sliding door including a power sliding door mechanism.
Accordingly, a vehicle including the power sliding door mechanism adopts a power supply apparatus for sliding door, that electrically connects the vehicle body side to the sliding door side by means of a cable. Since the cable is flexibly deformable to some extent, a change of the positional relationship between the sliding door and the vehicle body caused by opening/closing of the sliding door can be responded to. Thus, such type of power supply apparatus for sliding door enables the electrical and electronic parts of the sliding door side to receive power supply from the vehicle body side and to communicate control signals with the vehicle body side irrespective of an open/closed state of the sliding door.
In the above-described power supply apparatus for sliding door, however, in a case where the cable connecting the sliding door side to the vehicle body side is completely freely deformable, a failure may occur because, for example, the deformed cable is brought into contact with and caught by the electrical and electronic parts or the cable vibrates to cause an abnormal noise. Therefore, for the above-described power supply apparatus for sliding door, various configurations have been proposed for restricting the deformation of the cable that connects the sliding door side to the vehicle body side.
For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a power supply apparatus for automobile sliding door, including a flexed portion protecting member that accommodates a flexed portion of a wiring harness, which is located in the middle with respect to the longitudinal direction thereof, in such a manner that the flexed portion is movable substantially in parallel with a sliding door. The flexed portion protecting member includes a first curved wall and a second curved wall. Patent Document 1 states that this configuration causes the flexed portion of the wiring harness to be pressed against the curved walls and therefore occurrence of a noise or a vibration due to backlash of the flexed portion is not caused.
Patent Document 2 discloses a cable routing support structure for sliding door, that is made up of a plurality of link members linearly coupled to one another and that includes a cable guide for guiding a cable. The cable guide is bent in accordance with a sliding movement of the sliding door, and arranged so as to extend toward the sliding door side. Patent Document 2 states that this can prevent any interference to other members in the vehicle main body side.